Into the Fire

By Alexander Fullerton

The first thriller in the WWII series featuring SOE agent Rosie Ewing, a "meticulously researched war novel" (Len Deighton).

 


Summer 1943: Rosie Ewing is an agent of SOE—Special Operations Executive—and a "pianist," Resistance slang for radio operator. Their average life expectancy is six weeks.


 


But Rosie is brighter than most, well aware of the consequences of a second's carelessness, or bad luck, or treachery. Or a fellow agent crumbling under torture, naming names.


Her brief is to set up a new network in occupied Rouen, where the old one has been blown and an agent is suspected of betrayal. If she gets there, that is. Landing from a gunboat on the Brittany coast, she must travel to Paris—carrying forged papers, a radio transceiver, and more than a million francs in cash . . .


Frighteningly realistic, unbearably exciting, the Rosie Ewing spy thrillers come from Alexander Fullerton, acclaimed for his "talent for combining historical fact with rousing fiction" (Publishers Weekly).


 


"The tension rarely slackens and the setting is completely convincing." —The Times Literary Supplement

 


"His action passages are superb." —The Observer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788630351

Alexander Fullerton

Alexander Fullerton was a bestselling author of British naval fiction, whose writing career spanned over fifty years. He served with distinction as gunnery and torpedo officer of HM Submarine Seadog during World War Two. He was a fluent Russian speaker, and after the war served in Germany as the Royal Navy liaison with the Red Army. His first novel, Surface!, was written on the backs of old cargo manifests. It sold over 500,000 copies and needed five reprints in six weeks. Fullerton is perhaps best known though for his nine-volume Nicholas Everard series, which was translated into many languages, winning him fans all round the world. His fiftieth novel, Submariner, was published in 2008, the year of his death.

Book preview

1

As the train slowed for some halt, she was remembering her farewell interview with Maurice Buckmaster in his flat in Portman Square, earlier in the day; how in her mind when he’d set the ball rolling with a cheerful ‘Ready for the off, are you, Rosie?’ had been the thought that it was only when they gave you the cyanide pill you could really say you were ‘off’.

She hadn’t got it yet. Marilyn Stuart – blonde, smartly uniformed as a 2nd Officer in the W.R.N.S. – would be handing it over to her later on. Together with a few other items, and after searching for and confiscating any giveaways such as an English railway ticket or ten-bob note, English cigarettes or book of matches – items which, if you had the bad luck to be searched and they came to light, could be enough to get you shot or hanged. After, as likely as not, some period of incarceration and torture. Images of which sprang all too readily to mind at the thought of the little pill which had to be reposing now in that locked briefcase… She’d also have some French pocket money for her – as well as a package containing a very much larger sum – and identity papers and a ration card in the name of Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre; and French cigarettes and matches, probably also a few extra props of the kind Marilyn specialized in producing at such times: a love letter for instance, or a scrap of one, some crumpled tram or Metro tickets. She’d already checked that Rosie’s clothes bore only French labels and laundry marks.

Last time – her first mission, last September – September ’42, that was, two days after her twenty-fourth birthday – she’d left from Tempsford in a Whitley of the R.A.F.’s Special Duties squadron and landed by parachute near Cahors, en route to join the network in Toulouse. At Tempsford there was an S.O.E. hut in which all such final checks were made, and she could remember all too clearly how she’d felt standing there with the suicide pill in its little postage-stamp-sized packet in the palm of her hand, asking herself in a suddenly overwhelming conviction of personal inadequacy as well as sickening fright, Am I strong enough for this? Fit for it? Am I, Johnny?

But would he have been? Johnny – who’d been her husband and was dead – and had cheated on her – whose image in her thoughts of him was no longer of his dark good looks and strong, muscled body, only of a Spitfire burning, falling, trailing smoke, exploding into the blue heave of the Channel – how about his powers of self-control? Or might there be no connection between inner moral strength and the kind attributed to heroes?

Exeter, this was. She’d pulled back the edge of the window blind to peep out, just as a whistle blew and the train gasped and thumped into motion. While they’d been stopped the catch on the compartment’s door had been tried several times, but it was locked, she and Marilyn isolated in their own secret, tight-nerved world. Avoiding strangers’ questions, however innocent or well-meaning, or eyes that might be less innocent, sharp enough to retain a visual memory; and of course to allow for exchanges of conversation, last-minute queries or reminders, reassurances either way. All of which according to the rules should have been in French, at this stage – getting her back into the habit of it. The train was rolling again now, anyway, accelerating back into its former pounding rhythm and in a long haul round to the left. Turning south, she realized, visualizing the coastline where it curved down towards Torquay: and recalling again those moments of panic at Tempsford, thankful that having been subjected to her baptism of fire, seven months of it – hectic months at that, culminating in the réseau – network – being penetrated by Gestapo agents so that it had had to be closed down – she’d got out through Spain and Portugal three months ago, but out of Toulouse initially only by the skin of her back teeth. Having weathered that, she had fewer self-doubts than she’d had that night at Tempsford.

Still scared stiff, of course. As was natural, and – as she now knew – didn’t have to be hidden from Marilyn; hadn’t, for that matter, had to be denied in Buckmaster’s flat this morning. Anyone who was not scared at such a time would have to be so bone-headed that she’d be useless. You did your best not to advertise it, that was all. Not to shake, or visibly sweat.

It was Colonel Buckmaster’s custom to invite agents to what was known as the ‘briefing flat’ for a final chat before their departure for the field. ‘Buck’ had had the command of ‘F’ Section of S.O.E. – Special Operations Executive – since the autumn of ’41. A tall man, spare, slightly stoop-shouldered, with a humorous look about him and a great deal of charm. After Eton he’d lived and worked in France for a number of years – first as a tutor, then as a reporter on the newspaper Le Matin, finally as assistant manager of the Ford Motor Company, with its headquarters in Paris. Prior to transferring to S.O.E. he’d been serving as Intelligence Officer of the 50th Division.

---

In Portman Square this morning – it was an easy stroll from ‘F’ Section’s headquarters at 62-64 Baker Street – he’d had Rosie’s file on his knee, but had opened it only after his butler – Park, who pre-war had been a bank messenger in Paris – had brought coffee and biscuits, and withdrawn. Marilyn Stuart had been with them too: from here they’d be going straight to Paddington.

‘I see we’re calling you Angel, this time. Whereas actually you’re Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre. War widow. Visiting your former mother-in-law near Brest – leaving the child with her. Yes, that’s good… Golly, what a lot of money. Million and a quarter – strewth… Of course, the quarter-million’s for – what’s her name—’

‘Jacqueline Clermont, alias La Minette.’ She added, ‘It’s a bulky package, all those francs. I’m hoping it’ll cram in with the transceiver.’

He’d stared at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘Because if they found one or other they might as well find both. Would, no doubt. But—’ reaching to touch wood, he shook his head. ‘Please God…’ He glanced at Marilyn: ‘She’s taking the new Mark III, did you say?’

A Mark III transmitter/receiver was the latest to become available, and until now it had only been available to field agents of S.I.S. Its provision to Rosie for this mission was obviously not unconnected with the fact that she’d be doing some work for them, as well as her own job.

The essential difference being that S.I.S. were intelligence gatherers, and S.O.E. agents were not. This trip, she would be.

‘Now. This private brief of yours, Rosie. Colonel – what’s his name…’ Flipping a page over, nodding. ‘Colonel Walther. The Clermont woman being his mistress, we’re told.’

‘Yes.’

‘But whether that means she hasn’t placed her final bet – do we have a view on that?’

‘I’ll have to form one on the spot. The impression meanwhile – down the road – is that she’s a good-time girl with a sharp commercial instinct. Likes men, too.’

‘Including Germans, evidently.’ He’d sighed. ‘I can’t say I like it much.’

‘No. Well…’

‘What I was leading to, though – you’re expected to keep the whole thing to yourself, I gather. Not letting even César in on it.’

César was to be her boss, organizer of the new réseau that was to be built up now in Rouen. If all had gone as planned he’d be setting up shop in Rouen at about this time, taking under his wing – initially – a courier-radio operator codenamed Romeo, sole survivor of the previously blown réseau.

Buckmaster suggested, ‘If you did find you needed help, César would be your man. Especially since at this stage Romeo’s a doubtful quantity. Nothing conclusive about it, but – well, you’ve got to face this, Rosie – if he’s a traitor, your cover’ll be blown the minute you contact him.’

‘Yes.’

She’d talked this out with the other people. And knew that Buckmaster needed to have her in there anyway because Romeo had been told to stay off the air – for obvious reasons – and until she arrived with her own transmitter there’d be no line of communication at all, to or from César. You had to take some risks.

‘César, thank God, is gilt-edged. A rock of a man. And as experienced as anyone we’ve got. Give him my personal regards, will you, when you see him?’ She’d nodded. Buckmaster added, ‘I’m stressing his reliability because you may well find you need his help – with your private brief, I mean. They want you to play it solo—’ he’d jerked his head, pointing it vaguely in the direction of St James’, and referring to S.I.S. – ‘and understandably, quite properly, I suppose – but they know as well as you and I do, Rosie, that that whole area is a minefield now. Our doubts of Romeo, and those other arrests – and the para-drop leak… Incidentally, why have S.I.S. asked us to do this job for them, do you imagine?’

‘Because a search for rocket-launching sites rather overlaps with our prospecting for arms-dropping ones. There’s also the usefulness of our links with Maquis and local French réseaux. It does seem to be up our street, or so I’d have thought.’

‘That end of it – yes, I agree. But the top end – the apex, if one could so call it – Colonel Walther and his little – er – hairdresser… He shook his head. ‘Rosie, I’m telling you, and I’m going to tell them, that these are my personal orders to you. One, unless La Minette is prepared to cooperate, and you’re certain she can be used safely – don’t push it. Back off, look for answers in the deep field. Coincide rather better with your normal S.O.E. activities anyway, wouldn’t it? Two, don’t tell Romeo a damn thing – don’t let him guess you have any sideline. And three, if you find yourself in trouble you’d be well advised to take César into your confidence. All the more so because it is a matter of such huge importance – as well as urgency. Effectively, in fact, I’ll be offering them César as a backup – to be brought in only on your say-so, of course. All right?’

---

The train had stopped again; there was shunting in progress. Marilyn said, ‘Newton Abbot. Our part gets detached here for the Paignton and Kingswear line.’

‘Not far, then.’

‘No.’ A smile. ‘Not far.’

Rosie thought, Like going back to school. Mummy saying ‘Be a brave girl, now…’

Thinking again then about this morning’s talk with Maurice Buckmaster, and the fact that some of his observations might have seemed contradictory. On the one hand, ‘It’s vital and urgent’, and on the other, ‘If the going’s hard, lay off.’ What he’d really been saying, she guessed, was that he’d had to agree to S.O.E. taking on this job – against his own judgement, therefore as likely as not under pressure from some higher level – and that he fully understood how important the task was, but was deeply concerned that Rosie might find herself out of her depth.

He tried to take care of his own, that was the thing. He liked to get his agents back: and all three of them this morning had been well aware that he sometimes did not.

Which took one’s mind back to the cyanide pill: and to the final stages of S.O.E. agents’ training, techniques of resistance to interrogation and torture. The basic aim, as taught on the course, was to hold out for forty-eight hours, the period regarded as minimal but adequate for other members of the réseau to go to ground.

Could be the longest forty-eight hours of one’s life, she imagined. Especially as one knew that once they decided you’d be of no further use to them – either that you weren’t going to talk or that you had no more to tell them – their standard practice was to send you to the concentration camp at Ravensbruck. Or Dachau, or in some cases Buchenvald, but more usually to the women’s camp at Ravensbruck. The French called it L’Enfer des Femmes.

The train was rolling again, on the branch line now. End of the line, where they’d disembark, would be Kingswear, the terminus for Dartmouth, on this side of the Dart estuary. There’d be a boat of some kind to meet them and take them out to an old paddle-steamer, the Westward Ho!, which was moored there as a depot-ship for the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla.

She met Marilyn’s thoughtful gaze, and smiled. ‘Please God it’ll be calm tonight.’

‘Not a good sailor?’

‘Lousy!’

Marilyn held up a hand with two fingers crossed: slender fingers with nails lacquered blush-pink. Totally unlike Rosie’s, which were not only unpainted but rather short: not exactly stubby, but – well, it was the physical difference between the two of them in more general terms as well, Marilyn being taller, slimmer – and blonde, almost ash-blonde, in contrast to Rosie’s middling brown, naturally wavy locks…

A rough crossing was the very last thing she wanted, tonight: even when it was calm, the sea was anything but her natural habitat, and a motor gunboat did sound like a very small craft in which to cross to Brittany.

It would be a fast trip, she’d been told. A dash of something over a hundred miles, in this moonless period. They only made the crossing when there was no moon.

She glanced up at Marilyn. ‘Quoi?’

Marilyn repeated – in French – ‘Your name?’

She swallowed: and became the French war widow…

‘Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre.’

‘Date of birth?’

‘September the tenth, 1918.’

‘Maiden name?’

‘Chrestien.’

‘Husband’s name?’

‘Henri. Lieutenant Henri Lefèvre. He was killed in 1940.’

‘Why are you on this train?’

‘I’ve left my daughter with her grandmother – on the farm. Near St Saveur. I’m going to Paris about a job – I need money, for the child and—’

She’d let her desperation show for a moment, but Marilyn cut in again: ‘What sort of job?’

‘Selling perfume. From the parfumeries at Grasse – well, a merchant in Paris who’s a sort of cousin—’

‘Your child’s name and age?’

‘Juliette. She’s three and a half. I hope to God the old woman will be kind to her. But to hold down any job that pays enough for us to live—’

‘No need to scream at me. We have to know who’s who, that’s all. Heil Hitler!’

‘Heil sodding Hitler…’

Relaxing. For about two minutes she’d had no doubt at all that she was Jeanne-Marie Lefèvre, a war widow. Well, she was – a war widow – and might easily have had a child; had no difficulty at all in imagining how she’d feel about it if she had.

---

The train’s rhythm was slowing again.

‘Kingswear coming up, Rosie.’

Breaking out of thoughts: not idle ones, but projections to Rouen where she’d be making contact with César and with the one who was under suspicion – Romeo. He was a Mauritian, Colonel B. had told her. There were several Mauritians working for S.O.E.; it was one partial solution to the problem of finding enough suitable recruits who were completely at home in the language. The rendezvous with César would be at a certain café where he’d be sitting with two cups on his table, both spoons in one saucer. After they’d met and agreed whatever arrangements were necessary, it would be up to him to arrange her introduction to Romeo; but she did have a way of getting in touch with Romeo directly – for better or for worse – if for instance César had been arrested before she got there. The number she had to call initially wasn’t his – Romeo’s – but an intermediary’s, so if anything disastrous had happened it would serve as a cut-out.

Touch wood. There was a lot to remember. You needed a good memory almost as much as you needed fluency in French.

She lifted her suitcase down from the rack. Marilyn’s only burden was a briefcase with the money, radio and other items in it. The suitcase was as scuffed and battered as you’d expect a penniless young French widow to be lugging around with her – as often as not on a bicycle, even over quite long distances.

Sea air: there was a light breeze from the southwest. Not enough of it to make the sea rough, she hoped. Quite a few other people – mostly naval, but a handful of civilians too – were getting out; a railway official shouted, ‘Ferry leaves in five minutes! Ferry for Dartmouth town, five minutes!

‘We won’t need that…’

‘Second Officer Stuart?’

A stocky lad – nineteen or twenty, no more – with the single wavy stripe of an R.N.V.R. sub-lieutenant on each sleeve: saluting her, smiling. Marilyn in her Wren hat managing to look officer-like as well as ultra-feminine. The sub-lieutenant was smiling at Rosie, though: ‘I’m Nick Ball, of M.G.B. 600. You must be our passenger. I’ve a boat here – motorboat—’

‘I’m coming too.’ Marilyn looked steely, as if she was expecting argument. ‘I take it I can be landed again before the train leaves?’

‘Of course. All fixed. This way… Oh, sorry, let me—’

‘How kind.’

He took the scruffy case from her and went ahead of them through the ticket inspector’s barrier, waited while Rosie gave up her railway warrant and Marilyn showed hers. ‘I’m going back on this train. How long have I got?’

‘Oh—’ checking the time on a pocket-watch: ‘Forty-five minutes, miss. Thereabouts…’

They followed the young officer out of the station and down to a jetty near the slipway. The ferry was just berthing, its wires scattering water like rain as they quivered taut, and a motorboat nearby – Ball led them to it – had three sailors in it who watched their approach. A leading seaman at the helm, a stoker at the engine and another sailor at the bow with a line looped through one of the iron rings. Ball passed the suitcase down, and the three of them embarked. Another, larger boat was filling up with naval people further along the jetty.

‘Let’s go, cox’n.’ Ball told them, pointing, ‘That’s where we’re going. Called Westward Ho! Used to plug up and down full of trippers, now she’s what you might call our mother-ship. This boat’s hers; ours is just a little dinghy. The kind one rows – you know, with oars?’

Rosie glanced at him sharply. ‘Will it be calm enough?’

‘Oh, we manage somehow. Irrespective.’ Grinning, as the motorboat chugged out into the estuary: the depot-ship wasn’t more than a hundred yards away. Further out, other ships lay at anchor, their hulls and superstructures mirrored in the still water of the estuary. Destroyers, she guessed. She asked him – insisting on a straight answer – ‘Will it be a smooth crossing?’

‘Millpond. Absolutely. Mind you – well, you’ll be all right. By about dawn, though, we’re told it’s going to blow up to something like force nine. So we’ll have a wet trip home.’ He pointed again: ‘You can see our boat’s bows, poking out there. See?’

On Westward Ho!’s other side: a low, grey-painted prow. It did look as if it might be fast – what she’d heard referred to as ‘racy lines’, no doubt… Out of sight again now, though, as the motorboat curved in towards a gangway near the paddle-steamer’s stern. Marilyn had asked Ball, ‘How many gunboats in your flotilla?’ and he’d told her, ‘Three. But the other two are currently elsewhere.’ The boat’s engine cut out. Swinging in; the engine revving again, going astern – and stopped. A boathook held them alongside at the bow, and the coxswain had grabbed at a rope back at this end where the wooden gangway slanted up. Ball murmured, ‘After you, ladies…’

---

It had been Marilyn who’d seen her off last time, too – at Tempsford, seen her right into the aircraft. She’d been her Conducting Officer, as they called it, during the months of training, March to August of last year. An unlikely mother-hen, with her slim figure, impeccable grooming, rarely a hair out of place: but she’d done it all too, could match the instructors in all those esoteric arts. At Wanborough Manor through the selection course and initial training, then at Arisaig in Inverness-shire for night operations, bridge-blowing and fieldcraft, living off the land; the instructors were commandos, poachers and ex-convicts. Safe-breaking was one of the subjects; industrial sabotage another, and of course parachuting. That was at Ringway, near Manchester. To Beaulieu then, where ‘school’ was a stately home and the trainees were billeted in various cottages and lodges while they studied codes, microphotography, forgery, techniques in the use of safe letter boxes, and as much as was known of enemy counter-intelligence. Finally, ‘Experience of Interrogation’.

The radio stuff had been a walkover for her, because she’d already been a trained operator – or ‘pianist’, as it was called in the Resistance. She’d been working for quite a long time at S.O.E.’s message-receiving centre at Sevenoaks, before the crisis point when Johnny had been killed and she’d wheedled her way into training as an agent – thanks to Maurice Buckmaster – and she’d only needed to familiarize herself with the Mark II sets which were then in use. That way, she’d saved months.

---

They were on the deck of Westward Ho! by this time, looking down at M.G.B. 600. Not making all that much of it – except that it was long and low, with guns of differing shapes and sizes under grey canvas covers here and there: in fact one was uncovered, two sailors in overalls working on it, bits and pieces lying around. The gunboat wasn’t quite as small as she’d expected – having seen photographs of M.T.B.s – but it was still no cruise-liner. A hundred feet long, she guessed; or a bit more. Not much more…

Nick Ball reappeared beside them. ‘I’ve put your case in the cabin. Show you down, when you’re ready. C.O.’ll meet you on board later, he’s in the Ops Room at the moment. Would you like to get your business done right away?’

A cabin was being lent to them in this steamer, and the ‘business’ would be Marilyn’s – transferring the money, packing it and other things in with the radio, and finding homes in Rosie’s pockets for odds and ends of French origin: other agents brought them back, and Marilyn squirrelled them away. She asked the sub-lieutenant, ‘Can we hear the start of the news at six, please? The preliminaries?’

Those ostensibly meaningless messages in French, she meant. The BBC put them out every evening. Ball nodded. ‘There’ll be a speaker in the cabin. I’ll make sure the main set’s tuned in.’

It wasn’t far short of six now; sailing time had been given as 1900. There was a lot of movement out there: boats going to and from ships and the shore – and a warship of some kind nosing in, by the look of it preparing to drop anchor. Immediately below them, too, on the gunboat: a derrick had been swung out and a wire sling was being lowered with a heavy-looking crate in it: sailors were standing ready to receive it. Ball told her, ‘We’ll be man-handling that ashore, later on.’ She checked the time on her wristwatch – an old, cheap one, and Swiss-made, therefore OK… But this all seemed so damned routine, she thought. Didn’t they even suspect there were times when one’s heart felt as though it might shake itself loose?

Probably not. No reason they should, she supposed. They’d have their own problems, wouldn’t they. Like getting you to the right place at the right time, under the Germans’ noses.

Ball had raised his hand in greeting to an officer who’d appeared on the M.G.B.’s deck, emerging from a hatchway – an R.N.V.R. lieutenant, bearded, heading for the gangway into this depot-ship with a rolled chart under his arm. He’d paused, staring up at them.

At Rosie: with his eyes slitted against the brightness of the sky behind them, the lowering sun. The curve of a smile – then incredulity… Marilyn heard Rosie’s intake of breath, her mutter of ‘Oh, my God!’

Why’d he grow a beard, for God’s sake?

Marilyn’s quiet voice, at her shoulder: ‘Friend of yours?’

Ball said, ‘Ben Quarry. Our hot-shot navigator. Aussie. Hell of a nice chap.’ He caught on, then: ‘Hey, d’you know each other?’

2

For a moment or two she’d been dazed. Not wanting a reunion with him here or now; but aware that it was inevitable, that she was going to have to do it – get it over, pass it off… Meanwhile he’d disappeared – up into this ship, presumably, might appear here with them at any moment. She was showing interest meanwhile in the activity on the gunboat’s deck; they were getting that crate out of the sling, and other boxes were being carried on board. Marilyn came to her aid then: ‘We’d better go down, Rosie. If we’re going to catch this broadcast. Not essential, but—’

‘You’ve the train to catch, too.’

He still hadn’t appeared, and she remembered as they moved away that the sub-lieutenant had said something about a conference in the Ops Room – and that Ben had been carrying a chart. Late for the meeting, she guessed. Ball seemed relieved that they’d decided to go below: no doubt he’d have more important things to do, just before sailing time, than entertaining passengers.

Marilyn asked her when they were alone – the cabin door shut, her briefcase and Rosie’s suitcase open on a bunk – ‘Old friend of yours, Rosie?’

‘Oh. Not really.’ She was emptying her pockets and bag: English money, cigarettes and so forth. She wouldn’t be taking the bag, only a purse. ‘Year and a half ago, roughly. We met in Baker Street, as it happens.’

---

A year and a half ago, and a day and a half after Johnny had been shot down. They’d given her a few days off from her job at the W/T centre and she’d come up to Baker Street to volunteer for the field-agents’ training course. She’d made an appointment first by telephone – without any trouble once she’d mentioned that she was fluent in French – but the middle-aged Army captain who’d interviewed her – one of Buckmaster’s administrative assistants, a dug-out with ’14–’18 medal ribbons on his tunic – had been determinedly discouraging. His reason – implied, not actually stated – had been that she was in a state of shock and grief, therefore in no mental state to take a decision of such magnitude. Potentially, he’d implied, her motive might even be suicidal. Give it a few months, he’d urged gently, carry on meanwhile with the excellent and valuable work you’re doing for us down there, Mrs Ewing. Then if you still feel you want to do it, let’s hear from you again. She’d assured him that she had no death-wish whatsoever, would have volunteered much sooner except that her husband had been against it and she’d felt he needed her – to come home to, as it were. (Although she hadn’t been the only woman he’d ‘come home to’, on occasion.) On top of having an absolutely normal inclination to remain alive as long as possible, she’d pointed out, she spoke French as naturally as she spoke English, and was already a trained radio operator. He’d agreed that this made her eminently well qualified, but repeated, ‘Give it six months’, and added that officially they weren’t yet recruiting women agents. It was coming: Colonel Buckmaster had been pressing for it but as yet hadn’t received formal authority from above.

And that had seemed to be that. Depressed, frustrated, angry – on top of Johnny’s death, although the reality of that hadn’t hit her as hard as it was going to within the next few days – she’d blundered down the stairs, stalked angrily through the narrow, gloomy hallway: the door had opened just as she’d been putting her hand out to it, and the man on his way in – naval uniform, a lieutenant – had been Ben Quarry.

---

She told Marilyn, ‘Almost knocked me down. I was in a bit of a state, you can imagine.’

‘And?’

‘Oh, you could say I let him pick me up. We went on a pub crawl and I poured all my woes into his ear. What I needed, I suppose. He was in some Staff job… Oh, yes – in St James’, some naval department of S.I.S.?’

‘N.I.D.(C), you mean. Its chief is known as D.D.O.D.(I). I think that stands for Deputy Director Operations Division brackets Irregular.’

‘You’re just showing off, now.’

‘They run this lot, Rosie. This flotilla. So – less of a coincidence than you might have thought. Let’s get on with this, shall we?’

‘I’m going to have one last decent cigarette.’

Caporals, thereafter. Marilyn wouldn’t leave her the English packet in case she forgot and took it with her.

‘Want one?’

A shake of her blonde head. ‘Look here, now…’

She and Ben Quarry had got drunk together that night, had woken together in a single bed in the Charing Cross Hotel.

‘Here. Identity documents. Driving licence. Your late husband got it for you. No test, then. Clothes coupons – not many left, I’m afraid. And ration cards – yours, and the child’s.’

‘But I’d have left that one with the old woman!’

‘Right, you should have. So you can be in a panic – if they inspect your papers in the train, for instance. You can be absolutely mortified – burst into tears, if you like. First chance you have you’ll be posting it back to St Saveur, meanwhile you’re frantic, the kid might be starving, for all you know.’

‘Well, I must say—’

‘Hush…’ Lifting a finger: and cocking an ear to the BBC, the start of apparently senseless French-language messages. One about dark clouds heralding rain, and a second to the effect that Paul’s boots had been repaired and awaited collection. Third: Au bord de la rivière poussent des saules.

‘That was it.’ Marilyn looked relieved. ‘Show’s on the road.’

The leader of a réseau in northwest Brittany would have been waiting for it too. He wouldn’t much care whether willows grew on the river bank or didn’t, but he’d be relieved to know that there’d been no snags and the gunboat was coming as arranged. The message would have gone out first at midday, and this repetition of it was the clincher.

‘Hey, just a minute…’

The Allied troops who’d landed in Sicily yesterday, Bruce Belfridge was saying, had been consolidating their beachheads, while advance units of parachute and glider troops had captured an inland airfield.

‘Watch this space.’ Marilyn switched off the speaker. ‘But look here, now…’

On the day she’d met Ben Quarry, Rosie was remembering, Singapore had been surrendered to the Japanese. Great events and very small ones, she thought: the import of them depended on where one was standing at the time. As an Australian, Ben had been particularly shocked by that news from the East, but his own private good news had still called for celebration: just as now those Sicilian beaches were pretty well obscured by her own image of a small, dark Breton cove. Marilyn meanwhile was producing more of her bits and pieces: ‘Bus tickets. Only a few weeks old, and they came from Landerneau – the station you’ll probably be using. Perhaps you took ma-in-law into town for shopping. But look – this is really quite important. A note to you from Louis saying he hopes he may have good news by the time you get back to Paris – if you could bear to live and work in the sticks, he says. Meaning Rouen, the job you’re hoping for.’

‘Did he write this himself?’

‘He did indeed. A very dependable old queen, is Louis. Well connected, too. Oh, here’s your map. And now, money…’ Some coins and crumpled, rather dirty notes, to go in the purse. ‘And look at this – snapshot of your little darling.’

‘Crikey…’

‘Fairly repulsive, I agree. But you think it’s the bee’s knees, obviously. Rosie, here’s the big money now.’

The wrapped package of banknotes, which she’d actually counted – more or less – before she’d signed for it, would serve as padding to hold the Mark III radio transceiver in place. The set was impressively compact – ten inches by seven by five, with a spool on which seventy feet of aerial was wound – and it wouldn’t have done it any good to be rattling around. Its battery was the heaviest single item. The quartz crystals were – as always – carried separately, in their own little bag inside a sponge bag with her toothbrush and other such items. Including French toothpaste, of course.

‘Cypher key.’

‘Pretty.’ Silk – like the map – overprinted with a jumble of letters. Far less bulky than the one-time pads she’d had last time. Easy to dispose of, too; you could burn each strip of silk after the transmission, and it would leave practically no ash. ‘That’s about it, then.’ Folding some rather tatty items of clothing back into the case … ‘Oh, except—’

‘Last but not least.’

The suicide pill.

‘Be sure to bring the beastly little thing back with you, eh?’

‘New kind of package?’

‘Rice paper. Don’t have to unwrap it, you see. Just pop it in as it is, and—’

‘Don’t they make it easy for us!’

They both laughed. Knowing it wasn’t in the least funny: only that for some reason you needed to make it seem so. To seem unreal – despite full awareness of the reality, and certain names and faces that sprang to mind. The odds were against you, logically they had to be; and one statistic – sufficiently unattractive to be taken with a pinch of salt – was that the average working life of an S.O.E. pianist at this stage in the battle was six weeks. Rosie felt she really could discount it, anyway: the main factor in recent German successes had been the increased efficiency of their radio-direction-finding equipment, and she’d been given special directives this time as to where and when she should or should not transmit. Never from the same place twice – not even from the same district, if she could help it, and preferably from rural areas.

Which was why you needed a battery, of course. But also, not to transmit at all if it wasn’t absolutely necessary – and/or on César’s orders – and with a limit on the duration of any one transmission. On no account any ‘skeds’, such as agents